Pauline Boty: Art for Sale at Christie's

In its sale of Modern Art commencing March 21, 2023, Christie’s is auctioning three paintings by Pauline Boty. One should make headlines—and set new auction records—on its own. But three? Remarkable, for the art of a woman who is still far too little known, who died heartbreakingly young, and whose remaining complete paintings are fairly few.

Boty was born in 1938 into a Catholic family in Surrey, and knew from an early age that she wanted to be an artist in myriad media. Her collages, paintings, stained glass, and passion for architecture sparked interest in Boty and her arts while she was still a student, first at The Wimbledon School of Art and then at the Royal College of Art. By 1961 she was celebrated, along with a host of other artists mostly men, as one of the first and leading Pop Artists in England.

In 1962, she, Peter Blake, Peter Phillips, and Derek Boshier were featured in Ken Russell’s BBC documentary Pop Goes The Easel. She was also starring in new wave films. Through her lover the director and actor Phillip Saville, Boty met musicians and television performers as well. When a young Bob Dylan came to visit London for the first time at Christmas 1962, Boty was one of his guides around town, taking him to a party at her friend Jane Percival’s at which he “sat in the corner and played ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’”—John Hughes has persuasively and engagingly told this story.

Boty in two stills from *Pop Goes The Easel*

In 1963, director Kenneth Tynan introduced Boty to Clive Goodwin, artist, writer, actor and agent. She and Goodwin married less than two weeks later, and were expecting their first child in 1965 when Boty was diagnosed with cancer. Refusing the treatments that might have saved her life but killed her unborn baby, Boty gave birth to a daughter, Katy, in February 1966. Though Boty then began radiotherapy for her cancer, it was too late. She died that July at the age of 28.

Clive Goodwin died of a brain hemorrhage, while in the custody of the Los Angeles police and suspected of drunkenness, in 1977. Katy Goodwin, called Boty Goodwin after her mother’s death, died of a heroin overdose at the age of 29. For decades, much of Boty’s art languished in a barn on a family property. Her rediscovery in the 1990s, a rush of articles about her and her art, and recent sale prices of her paintings all seem to indicate that Pauline Boty is at last becoming as appreciated and notable in the art world as she should always have been.

Christie’s are selling two paintings from Boty’s estate, “Golden Nude” (pictured above) and “Nude On the Beach.” The third is a preparatory sketch of one of Boty’s best-known, and last, paintings: “BUM.” (1966). A gift from the artist to Kenneth Tynan, “BUM” sold at Christie’s in 2017 for £632,750. Since then, her finished paintings have doubled in value. “With Love to Jean-Paul Belmondo” sold at Sotheby’s last year for almost a million pounds. Expect the sketch for “BUM,” estimated at £60-80,000, and also from Tynan’s estate, to considerably exceed its estimate.

For more about the gifted, conscientious Pauline Boty, browse through this website, and read Sue Tate’s Pauline Boty: Artist and Woman.

All images of Boty’s art are via Christie’s.